7.3. PostgreSQL

The current incarnation of the Postgres Object-Relational Database
Management System is known as
PostgreSQL
(a.k.a. Postgres 6). While Postgres has had SQL capabilities for only
three years, the system itself is over a decade old. In the early
1980s, Dr. Michael Stonebreaker of the University of
California at Berkeley designed a database system that pioneered many
of the concepts found in today's relational database systems.
This database engine was known as
Ingres (later University Ingres). Ingres was a free,
university funded project that quickly gathered a following among
other computer scientists around the world.

One company saw the business potential in this academic product and
it eventually trademarked and commercialized Ingres as a product. The
original, free version of Ingres was renamed University Ingres and
its development continued independent of the commercial version.

After a period of time, Dr. Stonebreaker's research led him
further away from the original design goals of Ingres. He decided
that it was time to design a completely new database system that
extended the ideas of Ingres and went beyond into new territory. The
database system became known as Postgres for Post-Ingres.

Postgres, like Ingres, was a university funded project that has been
free to the public. Also like Ingres, the commercial sector took
notice of Postgres and the commercial product Illustra[11] was born. Free
Postgres has continued on and ranks up there in popularity with MySQL
and mSQL for mid-range database servers.

[11]Illustra was bought out by Informix in 1995 and is now part of
their Universal Server product.

In 1995, two developments happened that shaped the future of
Postgres. First, two of Dr. Stonebreaker's graduate students,
Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen, designed an SQL interface into Postgres.
Here, a few years after David Hughes first developed MiniSQL as a SQL
front-end to Postgres, Postgres finally had a true SQL front-end.
With SQL support came increased popularity. As with both mSQL and
MySQL, an increase in popularity brought on an increase for demand in
new features. The result was an object-relational database engine for
the mid-range that supports transactions, triggers, and subselects.
You can find out more about PostgreSQL at
http://www.postgresql.org.